That time Sakura threw herself in between Naruto and Sasuke's rooftop fight and Kakashi wasn't there to stop them in time.

Tsunade was able to save her hearing and most of her nerves, but her eyes were a very unfortunate casualty.

Now she's a civilian and has to figure out what to do with herself.

Sakura week on Twitter kickoff 🌸

naruto writing prompt:

when tobirama implemented d-rank missions, he did not mean for them to be menial chores. the point was for genin to use ninja skills and chakra techniques in new, unconvential, and creative ways.

kakashi’s team 7 is the only team to get it right.

Unrelated but why little Sakura in this panel looks so much like Sakura during the Kaguya fight...

Naruto meets her for the first time when he’s six, disheartened from numerous rejections to his proposal of play to the other children in the park. He sneaks off from under the beady eye of the orphanage matron, carefully trekking through the surrounding forest for a place to be by himself. 

He stumbles into a small clearing, empty at first glance. But the closer he walks, he begins to pick up the small sound of humming. Curious, but cautious, he crawls forward as quietly as possible. 

There, by the bushes, is a little girl that’s probably the same age as him. She sits on the ground, uncaring for the dirt that clings to her dress. Flowers surround her in piles, separated by colors. In her hands is the beginning of a flower crown, a mess of yellows, oranges and greens. 

He watches, fascinated by the peaceful image in comparison to the chaos of the playground and captivated by the girl’s features. He’s never seen anyone with hair like hers before - a shade of pink that reminds him of those pretty trees he saw last year. Then there are her eyes, barely seen from his position, but unmistakably a shade of green. 

Overall, compared to the dull browns and blacks of everyone else he’s seen, the girl is vibrant - pretty, even. He wants to step closer, see the color a little more clearly. He wants to know her name. Maybe even ask if she’d like to play (wonders if she’ll be his friend). 

Then she looks up, spots him and freezes. And suddenly, he doesn’t want to get close or ask anything, reminded of why he’s in the clearing in the first place. He shifts, wary and ready to run. 

“Hello.” 

He startles at the soft voice, gaze snapping to meet green eyes in surprise. The girl is standing up, absently brushing the dirt off the skirt of her dress. She doesn’t step close, watching him curiously. Then she smiles and he can’t look away. 

“I’m Sakura. Want to make flower crowns with me?”

Invincible Sakura, Power for What Purpose

still unbelievably mad, after all these years, about the injustice of haruno sakura. literally born a civilian, no clan abilities, placed on a team full of power-houses (read: destined to be seen as weak forever), brilliant, impeccable memory and cognitive abilities, superior chakra control to that of her god-like teammates, stubborn enough to get a sanin to train her and pull said sanin out of a serious cycle of addiction and depression, obtained the strength of a hundred seal mark as a teen, became konoha's best medic, supervised entire legions of medics throughout the war, and literally became konoha's strongest kunoichi- all for everyone to say she's horrible and annoying and still weak and overall just a terrible character. like yea!! she was failed by kishimoto (who even today, the writer's fail her daughter!!!!!!!) and the fandom, BUT SHE COULD HAVE BEEN SO MUCH MORE!!!!

sakura treated as a senju in everything except blood would have been great plot development but even better as a running gag once you factor in her trying to date an uchiha

its actually embarrassing how serious i take sasuke and the uchiha massacre and how the ball was dropped SO hard like. why!!!

Kizashi, helping with homework: If someone gets nosy… Just, you know, stab them.

Young Sakura: Stab them?

Mebuki: Politely.

Sakura: …

Kishi fucked up Sakura's character by making her a medic-nin.

Now, I love medic-nin Sakura. I love the parallels it comes with, the previous team 7 (Rin) and the Legendary Sannin (Tsunade), I love her being Tsunade's student, I love that it's something she can do that the boys can't do and that she more than excels in it, she's talented!!! BUT being a medic-nin forces her to take a background position in the plot/fights because a medic is the last person you want to get hurt. During the Pein Arc, Sakura gets to display leadership as she commands and organizes the hospital but can't physically help fight Pein because she has to do her job. It's not a bad thing, I actually wish more people were aware of this because they act like she had to help fight Pein when that's not her job. My problem with this occupation is that Sakura is still a main character, or suppose to be, and having her on the sidelines while her two other teammates are on the frontlines consistently does not make this feel like a team. Besides her overwhelming strength, the medic-nin skills that Sakura portrays are not as flashy or prominent as whatever narusasu is doing, and it makes the trio look unbalanced. It isn't until the war that Sakura has her Strength of a Hundred Seal and while it's very pretty & cool to see, it doesn't really compare to narusasu, who are apparently god-like alien descendants or something. Not to mention, out of all of the teams, and the Rookie Nine in general, Sakura is the only civilian-born ninja graduate. Then she gets put on a team where both her teammates have crazy strong clan bloodlines and her teacher doesn't teach her anything, she's at a maximum disadvantage!!! As a result, team 7 falls apart because narusasu don't have someone else, at their same level, to keep them in check and from tearing each other's throats out.

Now to my favorite part, talking about team 7 (the remix) and why Sakura and Sai make such a good duo. First things first, they are a perfectly balanced DUO. Emphaszing the hell outta duo because sai, naruto, and sakura as a team is still very unbalanced and more often than not Sakura and Sai end up as a duo anyway. This is because Naruto has the ability to leave and be perfectly fine on his own (for the most part). But in terms of skill and personalities, Sakura and Sai work really great together!

I feel like diabetes, especially type 1, is considered a "civilian's disease" since most who develop it either never become Shinobi or are forced to retire early when they struggle to keep their blood sugars in check.

As such, it wasn't until Sakura went to a civilian doctor (a desperate move by her parents once it became obvious the shinobi medics didn't know what was going on) for help that she finally got her diagnosis.

sakura having the energy of both a kid with super overbearing parents AND a latchkey kid. her range.

anyways time to talk about sakura’s xingese heritage and family while living in amestris and also how this ties in to her modern verse + her familial relationships, under the cut as always for length. art cred.

to sum up one of my earlier posts on sakura’s heritage, i personally headcanon that xing went through periods of political instability as a direct result of the heir deliberation         that rival clans competing to get their heir chosen as the next emperor could and did have adverse consequences on the population of xing. this would cause native xingese to leave the country for safer territory and,  knowing that there did at one point exist a trade route between amestris and xing,  many xingese would have escaped into amestris when the country was not yet closed off.  in amestris,  the xingese would form a close-knit community that offered protection and support for each other.

once amestris locked down and unleashed its full xenophobic and racist face,  many xingese and other minorities would have either fled the violence,  or settled deeper into society,  trying fervently to blend in.  once the trade route was destroyed,  the xingese in amestris likely had no other option but to hide their cultural identity,  maintaining links,  but otherwise spreading out to avoid detection from the amestrian dictatorship.

i headcanon that sakura’s paternal great-grandparents were one of the last xingese to come into amestris before the borders were locked down.  on both sides,  her family maintained links to their xingese culture,  but outwardly presented strong amestrian display.  

sakura’s parents met and married in amestris,  and outwardly presented a fiercely patriotic,  dogmatic stance in the amestrian military        prompted in large part by their residing in central,  which had the largest military presence and strongest anti-foreigner stance.  there had been discussion of moving elsewhere in amestris,  but their livelihood was tied in large part to the restaurant owned by them;  without guarantee of income,  success elsewhere seemed unlikely.  

many xingese born in amestris were given traditionally xingese names,  and more traditional  “amestrian”  names to blend in.  sakura’s parents were kizashi and mebuki haruno,  respectively;  they adapted the names  “hiram”  and  “margaret.”  this is keeping in with the jewish influence in the fma universe  (  hiram being a reference to the king of tyr and the ally of king david,  margaret  being of both greek and persian origin.  )   

notably,  kizashi and mebuki chose not to give sakura an amestrian name,  choosing instead to keep her xingese name entirely.  the elder harunos were notably terrified of the amestrian military and went out of their way not to provoke them,  so the naming was unusual;  nevertheless,  their daughter didn’t fit any whitewashed namesake,  and it felt like a small,  safe rebellion in an overly complicated and painful dictatorship.

sakura was raised in private xingese faith and cultural practice         she was fluent in xingese,  and lived as both a xingese woman and an amestrian.  she experienced a bit of a distance from her heritage as she grew older;  part of it out of natural caution towards the amestrian military,  but a part of it prompted too by the death of her mother.  mebuki was,  in many ways,  sakura’s foil and her twin flame;  both of them immensely stubborn,  both of them loyal and bound by their bonds,  both of them driven to succeed.  mebuki,  who had sacrificed so much of her own identity to stay safe and keep her family safe,  irked sakura as a child;  as an adult,  sakura could fully grasp just how much her family had suffered to live here,  and to give her a start.

living on her own in dublith,  sakura’s cultural ties to xing become reduced to small habits she never thinks about         brewing tea like her mother did,  her grandmother’s kimono kept safely in the attic,  swearing under her breath in xingese when she burned herself on the stove.  her heritage is placed on the backburner;  she did not,  strictly speaking,  look fully amestrian,  but she did not present as  “foreign,”  and her medical skills were such that anyone who might have asked questions chose to look the other way.  protected by both her own amestrian upbringing and her valuable skills,  sakura simply responds to anyone foolish enough to ask that she and her family were amestrian,  born and raised,  no other identity possible.

when the war in amestris ends and the xenophobic practices begin to fall away,  sakura finds herself for the first time free to celebrate her heritage and culture.  her father,  still cautious after so long,  never manages to discard his  “hiram”  identity,  but he delights in having grandchildren who learn their old language,  and xingese no longer being a dirty secret to hide.

sakura remains in touch with much of her family,  both maternal and paternal,  and writes to them on occasion,  but also forges new bonds as she opens her practice in dublith.  doctor marcoh becomes a surrogate father to her as they travel amestris;  discovering his betrayal is something that shocks and infuriates sakura worse than her own mother’s death.  sakura also becomes close with izumi and sig curtis,  who live just a few blocks down.  originally helping out as a doctor for izumi when her regular physician is off,  sakura becomes a surrogate daughter to the curtis’,  who gleefully accept her growing family as their own    (  including greed,  whom izumi never lets forget broke her hand.  )

ultimately,  sakura chooses to embrace both aspects of her identity         ethnically,  culturally,  and racially,  she is a xingese woman,  but she also firmly identifies as amestrian,  albeit an amestrian that  she  defines.

this translates over to modern verse,  where sakura is a japanese woman born and raised in america.  her father was first generation american,  and her mother was born in japan and moved to america;  sakura often navigates the divide of being a japanese-american,  and the frustrations that comes with.  although her family does not hide their japanese heritage,  sakura is encouraged to embrace american identity politics,  to give her an equal chance in a still prejudiced and racist society.  sakura is far more open and proud of her heritage,  but she does not like to be defined  solely  as a japanese woman:  like being a woman,  or a doctor,  or having green eyes,  these are  parts  of her,  but not the entire identity.

underrated naruto dynamic: tragic orphan & friend who has a messy and strained relationship with their parent(s)

On the way back from Tea Country with Chakra-poisoned Kakashi tryna "casually" fish for some info before Sakura comes in with the one-hit KO on accident.

So she's got some complicated feelings for Kakashi as well, though they're a lot milder than what she feels about Sasuke.

There's a moment in my AU where Sakura goes through a deep reflection ritual, in which she has to face Inner Sakura -who is representative of all the ugly truths her day-to-day self hasn't been able to face- and come to terms with who she is.

During that time, she's got to face the music.

The music:

Sasuke is the last prodigal son of a clan that was brutally butchered. He's a genius with one of the most powerful dojutsu out there (that he has no idea how to use) and is coming in hot with more baggage than an airport terminal.

Naruto is not normal. She doesn't know what he is (as in-canon, she finds out after the time-skip and the Sakura from above is right on the cusp of Shippuden), but there's nothing normal about a kid who can pull wild orange chakra and who can fight Gaara's tailed beast and come out on top. He's got the personal attention of the Hokage, but the entire village has banded against him for some reason. He's special.

Kakashi is a war veteran turned Jounin and an infamous ANBU captain (I headcanon that some ANBU names are leaked specifically to generate a healthy level of fear/caution among other villages- which is why we know of Itachi/Kakashi/Shisui very publically) and is ALSO the last prodigal son of an old noble clan.

(No way a bookworm like Sakura didn't consume every publically available scroll on Konoha clans).

It doesn't take the big brains to figure out that he got team 7 specifically to help deal with Sasuke's trauma/teach him about the Sharingan, and put a leash on Naruto (and in the future, when she finds out that Madara was able to control the Kyuubi with the Sharingan as well as the knowledge that Kakashi was Minato's student it becomes even clearer why he got the Sasuke/Naruto combo.)

And Sakura? Sakura is a civilian. No clan, no dojutsu, nothing to her name except great chakra control. She's the literal meat in the meat-grinder of the military machine of Konoha, the acceptable sacrifice in a group of otherwise invaluable shinobi. She's just a...girl. (And it doesn't help that she was obsessed with Sasuke instead of training, furthering the gulf between her and Kakashi.)

Kakashi was absolutely not built to handle her- in fact, Kakashi has NO idea how to relate who hasn't gone through a mountain's worth of trauma or someone who hasn't been ingrained in the shinobi-as-a-tool lifestyle, and even then, he's not fully equipped to handle people who have (lmao Sasuke). Not to mention the man is a prodigy- he has no idea how to teach people who have to work hard to get somewhere in life. How do you teach someone if you've never had to 'work hard' to get there yourself?

So, Sakura understands that Kakashi was put in one of the most ridiculous situations of his career- a situation he had NO idea how to handle. She can forgive him for that. BUT, she can't forgive him for not trying his best.

Sakura spent a lot of time coming to terms with the fact that she rushed into the Chidori/Rasengan combo without a single idea of what she would do, but...Kakashi was a big reason for that.

She was HIS responsibility, and he fumbled that bag. Whatever his reasoning, whether it was to 'protect' her, or whether he thought she was worthless, whatever: he should have TRIED.

Kakashi was an adult with resources aplenty. He recognized that she had stellar chakra control but never bothered to teach her genjutsu or direct her to teachers who could pick up the slack.

And after the accident, he abandoned her again. Being forgotten in lieu of Sasuke and Naruto hurt...but she could heal. Being abandoned as some kind of martyr to Kakashi's failures as a teacher? It's gonna take a while for Kakashi to make that up to her...if he can muster the courage to face her.

Sakura finally understands why he preferred the memorial stone to the living. He already failed the dead, and it's easier to wallow in self-flagellation than it is to try and step up for the living.

Sakura stopped being a coward some time ago, and when Kakashi finally does the same, she'll forgive him.

Thank you so much for sticking with this wall of text! And thank you so much anon for the question! Once again, I really appreciate all the kind words people have been throwing my way. <3 <3 <3